Location Fort Worth, Texas Warden Jody R. Upton | Status Operational Phone +1 817-782-4000 | |
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Security class All security levels (with minimum-security prison camp) Population 1,380 (280 in prison camp) Managed by Federal Bureau of Prisons Address 3000, I St, Fort Worth, TX 76127, USA | ||
The Federal Medical Center, Carswell (FMC Carswell) is a United States federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas for female inmates of all security levels with special medical and mental health needs. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. The facility also has a prison camp for minimum-security female inmates.
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FMC Carswell is located in the northeast corner of Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, formerly known as Carswell Air Force Base. It lies in the northwest part of the city of Fort Worth, near the southeast corner of Lake Worth.
As of 2015, the sole woman with a federal death sentence is incarcerated at FMC Carswell.
History
Prior to the facility's opening, women went to a federal prison hospital in Kentucky that also served male prisoners. The Kentucky facility closed and FMC Carswell opened in 1994. The facility previously served as the medical center for Carswell Air Force Base.
Facility and programs
FMC Carswell is fully accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the American Correctional Association. It is the only medical facility for women in the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The main five story building has a capacity of 600 prisoners. The minimum security prisoners live in barracks outside of the main compound.
Although most inmates at this facility have some form of medical condition requiring treatment, there is also a general population of inmates at FMC Carswell who do not. Carswell houses the single woman who is currently under federal death sentences. FMC Carswell has an administrative high security unit, which houses women in the BOP system who are classified as "special management concerns" due to violence and/or escape attempts. The unit has a capacity of 20 women.
In 2009 Philip Fornaci, the director of the DC Prisoners' Project, stated that Carswell, along with FMC Butner and FMC Rochester, "are clearly the "gold standard" in terms of what BOP facilities can achieve in providing medical care" and that they had provided "excellent medical care, sometimes for extremely complex medical needs."
Notable incidents
Articles criticizing FMC Carswell have appeared in various media outlets relating to various forms of prisoner abuse. These articles focus on allegations of medical malpractice, neglect, and sexual abuse of inmates by staff. Over a seven-year period, seven FMC Carswell staff members were convicted of sexual abuse of a prisoner. In March 2000, a correction officer at FMC Carswell, Michael Lawrence Miller, raped a prisoner. The prisoner did not report the incident after it occurred, but kept a pair of sweatpants she wore during the incident as proof. As she was being released in September 2000, she gave the sweatpants to a prison administrator. Implicated by this evidence, Miller was convicted, and in 2004 he was sentenced to 150 months (12 years and 6 months) imprisonment. He served out his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Sandstone, and was released on March 19, 2015.
In May 2008, Vincent Inametti, a Roman Catholic priest who worked as a chaplain at FMC Carswell, was sentenced to 48 months in prison and ordered to pay a $3,000 fine after pleading guilty in November 2007 to two counts of sexual abuse of two inmates. Inametti, Register # 36889-177, was imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution, Butner Low in North Carolina and released in October 2011.